Danno Hoff
I went to UW-Madison for Civil Engineering because "Mad-Town" sounded like a lot of fun and some standardized test said I was good at math and figuring stuff out. After graduating in 2003, I've spent virtually my entire adult life as an entrepreneur. I've had the thrilling experience of starting, building, growing, acquiring, and selling my businesses. Lori Grenier from SharkTank was quoted as saying, "Entrepreneurs are the only people who will work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week"... I love that. With the opportunity to sell my entire business in 2013 at the ripe old age of 33, I needed to think very hard about my options. Am I too young to walk away? What about the team we've built? What does the next 20 years in this business look like? Is my team going to be cared for the same way I did? What about our customers who supported us when we were nothing? What is my opportunity cost of having my life revolve around this business? I loved building the business, but I also love golfing and spending time with friends and my family. What else could I be doing with my time if I sold my business? Who can help me figure this out?
I met with several financial professionals, from the insurance salesmen, to the stock jockeys, to the CPAs, to the bankers, to the attorneys, and I called many friends and family and other people that I respected. Friends and family mostly listened, that's really what I needed from them. It felt like everyone else was selling me their product or their service, telling me why they were 0.2% better than the next guy, and no one had any way to quantify my options and show me the comparison of what my next 30-50 years might actually look like financially with one decision or the other. It all felt very fragmented. Simply put, there was a gap in the industry. There was no comprehensive planning being offered to me. There was no "Rent-a-CFO". How was I supposed to make such a big decision, just listen to the guy who tells the best investment story? I was left to evaluate those products, pitches, value propositions, relationships, and opinions for myself, and to try to tie them together to understand what it all meant for me in the big picture. Fortunately for me, I had started studying investing and finances during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. I loved it, so I had a much better working knowledge in 2013 than most about how money works. My engineering mindset forced me and allowed me to quantify it... ALL OF IT. Microsoft Excel anyone?!? I built myself different financial plans, modeling in as many different factors as I could, looking out at my financial life and personal life for the next 50 years, trying to get my mind around my options. I didn't know what I was doing, I just kept putting the puzzle pieces together. I still had to make the final decision myself, but quantifying it helped me get my mind around what it meant in the big picture. Thankfully we have fancy software for that now, we can do that for many people at the same time, and we can do it much better than my Excel versions.
I know now that what I was really looking for was financial planning and a business consultant, not an insurance sales guy and not a "hot" stocks sales guy. Maybe I just didn't know where to look, but I couldn't find anyone helping the pre-retiree to quantify their situation, and I couldn't find anyone creating a team built for helping the business owner through exactly this kind of situation. We've filled that gap now, and it feels good to be able to bring that transparency and clarity to our clients who are trying to make these kind of significant financial and business decisions.